.....so you can see, these are "stand-in" terms for something or someone who you cannot specifically name.

Some people refer to such terms altogether as "cadigans/kadigans" and I am looking for the RUSSIAN word for such term. Perhaps a near synonym would simply be "placeholder names" and I cannot even find that term in Russian.

Thank you, I hope that clarifies that I was trying to find another word besides "sweater".

dsteve54

P.S. as of April 12, 2009, I still don't know the correct Russian term!!!

By the way, even though I am looking for the
RUSSIAN word for "cadigan/kadigan/placeholder name", let me give you some examples of such in USA:
John Doe
Jane Doe
thingamajig
doohickey
widget
Tom, Dick, and Harry
Joe Blow
"Joe the Plumber" ha ha ha ha
Joe Public
Tweedledum and Tweedledee
Anytown, USA
Bumf*** Egypt
The Boondocks
Upper B***crack
Hicksville
Timbuktu
Eleventh hour
two freckles past a hair (when asked for time and you look and your watch is gone)

God-thirty in the morning
Stone's throw

In case there are some Russians here, who can give me the overall name for such terms, here are some Russian ones

I don't know if this website is helpful, but they say they a have a word for you:
Website: http://dic.academic.ru/dic.nsf/enwiki/2490462Word and examples:
* In Russian, fillers are called "слова-паразиты" (vermin words); the most common are "Э-э" (eh), "это" (this), "того" (that), "ну" (well), "значит" (it means), "как его" (what's it [called] ), "типа" (like).

bnjtokyo wrote:I don't know if this website is helpful, but they say they a have a word for you:Website: http://dic.academic.ru/dic.nsf/enwiki/2490462Word and examples:* In Russian, fillers are called "слова-паразиты" (vermin words); the most common are "Э-э" (eh), "это" (this), "того" (that), "ну" (well), "значит" (it means), "как его" (what's it [called] ), "типа" (like).

Well, it is a good try, but it does not quite fit the category I was after, although we may sometimes say "what's it" in a non-hesitating way as a placeholder, in the manner of the original question. But the others are words or phrases we use when stalling for a thought or "feeling like we need to fill space".

The category of words I am after are delivered assertively, maybe for local color, in order to demonstrate that you really cannot think of the word but there is always a mutually understandable placeholder at the ready.

Having said all this, thank you for your comment because I actually needed to know the term for the class of words you mentioned also, and "слова-паразиты" was a new term for me. So that is useful.

I have one contact in the Ukraine (a musician) who thought that
метка-заполнитель
was fine, but someone else in Moscow felt that such a word would only be known in technical circles, as "placeholder" in this sense, is generally used in computer programming. So far there does not seem to be a term in everyday life, though one other person is checking with professors.

It's very possible that ultimately there may not be an equivalent, and that's ok, though I would like to think in academic circles that philologists would say something other than a long phrase that amounts to a definition.

dsteve54
P.S. In an unrelated matter, I see that "weasel word" is
двусмысленное слово, which is like saying "two-edged", "double-barrelled", "ambiguous", "fuzzy", "ambiguous", etc.

It seems to me that kadigan/cadigan is a recently coined technical term in English. I personally have never encountered it before, and the term are not defined in any of the major dictionaries (Webster's et al.). The internet suggests it was coined in the 1960's and used to denote a sematic category, so I would guess that a corresponding term in another language would be similarly technical and obscure.

Since the Good Dr. Goodward is an expert in Russian, maybe we could get him to put in his two bits.

bnjtokyo wrote:It seems to me that kadigan/cadigan is a recently coined technical term in English. I personally have never encountered it before, and the term are not defined in any of the major dictionaries (Webster's et al.). The internet suggests it was coined in the 1960's and used to denote a sematic category, so I would guess that a corresponding term in another language would be similarly technical and obscure.

Since the Good Dr. Goodward is an expert in Russian, maybe we could get him to put in his two bits.

Yes, I think "similarly technical and obscure" would the operative words here.

I actually did ask Dr. Goodward in the past about both the Russian and English terms such, and he was not able to shed any light, after a time, I just posted here.

I actually was able to contact someone in Kazakhstan who is in a university there and he is going to ask some of his philologist professors. So by hook or crook, I will find something out, if not on this forum, then maybe from ex-Soviet bloc resources.

The one term I originally posed was known by a musician friend of mine in the Ukraine, and she thought it would be appropriate. But another person in Moscow had NOT heard the term and thought it was a technical term used in computer programming (perhaps when describing C programming rules in meta-language).

It may eventually be borne out that there just is not a single all-encompassing phrase for such words, and that's okay. As you pointed out, even in English, "[k/c]adigan" is sort of obscure, so maybe the entire topic does not come up often enough to have special labels.

One thing I came up with is that cadigan appears to be itself. The only definition I found is that it is a word for thingamabob, which makes it a tautology, no? A word can't be its own definition, can it?

Life is like playing chess with chessmen who each have thoughts and feelings and motives of their own.

Slava wrote:One thing I came up with is that cadigan appears to be itself. The only definition I found is that it is a word for thingamabob, which makes it a tautology, no? A word can't be its own definition, can it?

Well, I've always favored this particular definition:

loopn. for definition of loop see: loop.

Here we go loopty-loo ...

Regards//Larry

"To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them." -- Attributed to Richard Henry Lee

Slava wrote:One thing I came up with is that cadigan appears to be itself. The only definition I found is that it is a word for thingamabob, which makes it a tautology, no? A word can't be its own definition, can it?

If you know Russian, you can,of course, read verbatim. If not, I am paraphrasing below:
{
"I had a talk with different people on your question (dsteve54 - meaning the whole issue on this thread), but nobody can come up with an analogy (dsteve54- in Russian) for "placeholder name". Not from the faculty in the Russian department, nor with same in Foreign Language faculty. Most likely, we simply do not have a term for such collections of words (dsteve54- I am paraphrasing to complete the intended meaning). Everyone understands what the concept means (dsteve54 -implied "by looking at the collection of terms"), but nobody can come up with an overall term for such.
}

So based solely on this, along with other input on this thread, it appears that "there is no such all-encompassing term for such phrases". If contributor Slava is correct, then "kadigan/cadigan" is an INSTANCE of one of these types of words and not a descriptor. That's not going to cut it.

So in essence, it appears that when we are talking about these structures we have to say something like ".....And then there is the category of words that we use when we cannot think of specifics, like blah, blah, blah (examples)...".

It seems cumbersome to me, BUT I am not sure "placeholder word" would be universally understood in this context.

Well, so far, we "gave it the old college try". Maybe something will surface.